Introduction and Setup Impressions

The Intel NUC category has been an interesting product line to analyze, as it provides us with insights into where the traditional casual / home use desktop market might end up. UCFF (ultra-compact form factor) PCs have had an excellent reception in the market, both from home and business users. Intel kickstarted the market with the Sandy Bridge NUCs a couple of years back. Since then, we have had NUCs based on Ivy Bridge, Haswell and even Bay Trail. Other vendors such as GIGABYTE, Zotac and ECS have their own UCFF variants in the BRIX, nano xs and LIVA models respectively.

UCFF PCs have become popular due to a host of factors - performance per watt has improved to such an extent that much of the average consumer's traditional desktop work can be done with systems sporting a sub-20W TDP CPU. SSDs are becoming smaller and smaller, with even 1 TB mSATA units available in the market. High speed interfaces such as USB 3.0 have also become ubiquitous, removing the need for dedicating storage space inside the chassis for fast access to large amounts of data. The advent of mobile platforms have also made casual gaming quite popular - and power-hungry discrete GPUs are not needed for those. All these trends have enabled powerful palm-sized computers - the Next Unit of Computing. Intel has been pushing the performance per watt aspect and GPU performance heavily in the last few generations, making each successive NUC generation more attractive than the one before.

The 14nm Broadwell CPUs were introduced into the market with the Core M branding for fanless ultraportables. Essentially a rebranding of Y-series CPUs, its power efficiency got everyone excited about what a higher TDP version (U-series) could bring for the PC market. Even as ultrabooks based on Broadwell-U are getting ready for the market, Intel and its partners have started getting the UCFF units into the hands of consumers. Intel's Broadwell NUCs were introduced at CES 2015. We have already reviewed GIGABYTE's Core i7-5550U-based BRIX s unit, giving us some insight into how a 15 W TDP Broadwell-U might perform for common workloads. In the concluding section of that review, we had remarked that it would be interesting to see how Intel would differentiate its Broadwell NUC from its partners' UCFF PCs. This review of the NUC5i5RYK - Intel's Core i5 Broadwell-U-based NUC - provides some insights.

The first Sandy Bridge NUC was important for two main reasons - the obvious one being the kickstarting of the UCFF craze. The other one was the introduction of Intel's premium external I/O interface - Thunderbolt - in a reasonably priced system outside the Apple ecosystem. Unfortunately, with Ivy Bridge and Haswell, Intel took a step backwards. NUCs based on those didn't stand out much from what was brought out by vendors such as GIGABYTE and Zotac (in the non-vPro market). With the Broadwell-U NUCs, Intel is trying to regain the edge. These units are the first UCFF PCs that we have seen with support for M.2 PCIe SSDs.

Traditionally, the NUCs are barebones machines - the end-user could choose an appropriate mSATA SSD (or, for selected models, 2.5" drives), a mini-PCIe WLAN adapter, DDR3L SO-DIMMs and an operating system. Intel has two main changes in the barebones approach for the Broadwell-U NUCs: The WLAN adapter (Intel AC7265) now comes soldered to the motherboard. mSATA SSDs are no longer supported. In its place, we have support for either SATA or PCIe-based M.2 SSDs. Similar to the previous generation NUCs, a free SATA port is available on the board. It can be used to hook up 2.5" drives in certain models.

In order to bring out the capabilities of the NUC5i5RYK, we evaluated two configuration:

Mainstream (M.2 SATA SSD + DDR3L 1600 C9)

Enthusiast (M.2 PCIe 2.0 x4 SSD + DDR3L 1866 C10)

The specifications of both NUC5i5RYK review configurations are summarized in the table below.

The Intel NUC5i5RYK kit doesn't come with any pre-installed OS, but our pre-production engineering sample review unit came with a USB key containing the drivers. In addition to the main unit, the other components of the package include a 65 W (19V @ 3.43A) wall-wart (with detachable multi-country power plugs), a VESA mount (along with the necessary screws), setup guides and a QVL (qualified vendors list) for the memory and storage subsystems. The gallery below takes us around the package contents and the external features of the unit.

The NUC5i5RYK officially supports DDR3L SO-DIMMs at 1600 MHz. The Kingston HyperX modules that we utilized for the mainstream build had no trouble whatsoever in operating at the rated speed and latencies. For the enthusiast build in which we went the M.2 PCIe SSD route, we initially tried to use the Corsair Vengeance 2133 MHz (C11) kit that worked well in the Broadwell BRIX s unit. Unfortunately, the NUC refused to boot with that kit. Given the pre-production nature of the kit and the absence of the Corsair Vengeance series in the QVL, it didn't come across as too much of a surprise.

In any case, we were able to utilize the 1866 MHz (C10) kit without any problems whatsoever. The BIOS (with memory auto-configuration by default) automatically configured the memory speeds to the maximum rated value. Intel's Visual BIOS is one of the few UEFI BIOSes that provide a good user experience. Plenty of configuration options are available for the end-user (including configurable maximum sustained as well as burst power consumption). The gallery below shows the various BIOS options available.

Certain default configurations (such as disabling of the WLAN subsystem) in the BIOS are questionable, but they should be hopefully fixed by the time the NUC5i5RYK officially starts shipping to end users.

In the table below, we have an overview of the various systems that we are comparing the Intel NUC5i5RYK (Enthusiast) against. Note that they may not belong to the same market segment. The relevant configuration details of the machines are provided so that readers have an understanding of why some benchmark numbers are skewed for or against the Intel NUC5i5RYK (Enthusiast) when we come to those sections.

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83 Comments

I am a confirmed HTPC user, I have 2 in the house. One, more powerful, is used to rip Blu rays down to NAS, (plus play, Netflix/Amazon Prime, Web browsing) the other is used simply to play movies, browising, word processing and "Old" gaming - I am a big fan of Total War, old versions.

Total silent operation is a must. I do not care how quiet the fan is, in soft parts of movie playback I can hear it.

The old i3 NUC, in a fanless case, makes for an excellent low power HPTC. A Broadwell U will be as good.

My problem is then I am not sure even that power is necessary for most HTPC use where simply streaming from NAS or similar external disk. For the next HTPC I am looking forward to reviews of Intels Bay Tree on a stick, so small it could be stuck behind my AV receiverReply

Having 'too much' power for an HTPC has two main advantages:1) Interface speed. This is both for actual rendering of the interface bells & whistles, and for populating large directories when browsing.2) CODEC futureproofing. H.265 is on the horizon, and Hi10p H.264 has some very nice benefits in bitrate reduction (or better perceptual quality at the same bitrate), but low power hardware that relies on fixed-function decoder blocks will be left high and dry. Even if they DO have a FFB for a desired CODEC, it may not be sufficient to playback all files (e.g. the number of Level 4.0 h.264 decoders that can't handle full-bitrate Blu Ray streams). Reply

I'm not sure you realize how little processing power is actually used for rendering. Even now on an old dual core pentium my htpc barely hits 10% utilization on one core while watching h.264 stuff at 1080p. My second htpc which has a ~$55 amd 5xxx series card does most of it via the video card, which also is nowhere even close to being taxed.

This setup is WWWAAAYYYY past the needs of any kind of streaming/media/htpc. At these price ranges you can actually build a pretty decent desktop with a dedicated graphics card. Yes, it won't be this small, but you will actually have real graphics performance (i.e. a gtx 960 or r9 280, etc).Reply

Wouldn't you consider an AMD-based system a better option for an HTPC? Asking as I am considering one.I recently bought an AMD-based laptop and I am extremely pleased with it as I find it much more effective for casual gaming and, frankly, the CPU performance gap with Intel is "irrelevant" for HTPC use (at least the one I have in mind).Reply

YankeeDDL: Short answer is yes, AMD laptop in many cases is a much better HTPC (unless it has a fan!)

But will it look good with the rest of your AV kit? My main HTPC is in a HDPLEX 3 case, which looks great (but pricey), my second HTPC is an i3 NUC in a Tranquil fanless case - again fits right into the AV style.

I guess it depends on what you want. Edzieba is clearly much more of a power user of an HTPC than I am. That does make him right and me wrong (or vice versa), just different. But I have yet to find any user of an HTPC who, with all else being equal, would want to have fans in the HTPC if it could run fanlessReply

Its not about being a power user... he's talking about why more cpu punch can be a good thing. If you don't have a fixed function decode block for a new codec and your CPU is too crappy to do it in software, then you need to buy a new CPU and mobo. If bay trail on a stick can't do h.265 you're screwed if you try to play h.265 content, but a broadwell NUC might be able to do it in software (assuming it can't decode in hardware... which it may)Reply

Agree, I ran into that problem years ago especially with Hi10p (10-bit H.264) which requires software decoding. Those low power slow CPUs (like AMD E-350 and Atom 330) just would not be able to decode it smoothly. Broadwell already has H.265 as well as 10-bit H.265 and VP9 support in its latest drivers: http://techreport.com/news/27677/new-intel-igp-dri...Reply

cjs150: Interesting that you bring up the HDPLEX 3 case. I currently use a D54250WYKH, but have one major complaint with it being the power supply. I don't use mine as much for HTPC, but do use it for an audio setup (Schiit Modi2 Uber/Magni2 Uber and JBL LRS305), and the power supply is so noisy. I've found that the PSU leaks noise on the negative side, into the chassis which is not properly isolated or grounded. Connecting the DAC results in noise shooting through the system even before the USB cable makes actual contact with the NUC. I've tried different surge protectors, relocating devices onto different outlets to no avail. The other day I actually ordered the HDPLEX linear power supply to hopefully resolve the issue once and for all.Reply